Re: The museum's deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years.
"They were worth billions of dollars," she said.
"The Americans were supposed to protect the museum. If they had just one tank and two soldiers nothing like this would have happened."
One US tank and two GIs to "protect" the museum, eh? LOL! It's like asking two foxes to guard the henhouse...
Actually, it's deja vu all over again!! Just connect the dots:
Following the Anschluss - Germany's annexation of Austria on March 13, 1938 - Hitler oversaw the wholesale confiscation of Jewish property, including the great art collections of barons Louis and Alphonse de Rothschild, the priceless paintings and rare volumes of the library belonging to Baron Butmann, and many more. Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in May 1939 involved the seizure not only of Jewish-owned art, but also the library of Prague University, the holdings of the Czech National Museum, the palaces of the Schwartzenbergs and Collerdos, and the Lobkowicz collections, which included Flemish painter Breughel's masterpiece, Hay Harvest. The best of this loot was shipped to Germany, as were the Habsburg crown regalia from Vienna and the Bohemian crown jewels from Prague.
Raping nations of the cultural heritage not only demoralized conquered states - the reflected glory of pillaged landmarks of civilization lent the Third Reich an aura of grandeur. Having promised the Austrian city of Linz, where he'd attended school, Hitler demonstrated in the Polish campaign of 1939 how highly the acquisition of precious art rated in his strategic military operations. SS units accompanying the invading Nazi troops, provided with detailed information about the location of dozens of works of art, captured the famous altar by Veit Stoss in Cracow, relocated by the Nazis to Berlin, and the legendary Czartoryski collections of coins and relics, Limoges enamels, and engravings by 15th-century artist Albrecht Durer.
An unknown number of invaluable European artifacts have been stored in American bank and Treasury Department vaults since the war, classified a "national security" secret by the CIA. Only 200,000 of the items on the MFA&A inventory have been returned as restitution, primarily to wealthy German families and countries crushed by the Nazis. The CIA kept its share. A rare exception were the Hungarian crown jewels, found in a German salt mine as WW II wound down, returned in 1978 by order of President Jimmy Carter.
Kronthal succeeded Allen Dulles as head of the Berne station in 1947 under the newly formed CIA, an extremely powerful position that put him in charge of most covert operations in Western Europe. (In the immediate postwar period, most of the CIA's recruits were staunch Nazis among them Otto Skorzeny, Martin Bormann, Joseph Mengele and Klaus Barbie. In the moral vacuum of cold war realpolitik, they were employed in the importation of drugs, the instigation of foreign coups, the arming of terrorists and death squad training.) Kronthal was given nearly complete authority in the handling of the plundered cultural wealth of Europe.
[snip]
alexconstantine.50megs.com
How the US troops are slumming it:
The base pay of a private with one year of service is $15,480 a year, according to Department of Defense military pay rates. That's slightly more than the $14,144 pocketed by child-care workers and movie ushers, and the $15, 080 earned by crossing guards in 2002, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Base pay for a corporal with three years of service is $19,980 annually. The entry-level base salary for commissioned officers, such as soldiers with a rank of second lieutenant, is $26,200 a year.
Even General Tommy Franks' salary pales in comparison to what people of similar stature in corporate America would make, said John A. Challenger, CEO of the outplacement firm.
With more than 36 years of service, Franks earns an annual base pay of $153, 948. That's the yearly salary for commissioned officers at the highest pay grade with more than 26 years of service, according to the Department of Defense basic pay scale.
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Message 18770744
Well, I guess that, pretty soon, several posh estates in Texas and California will be endowed by the most exquisite spoils of war --Mesopotamian artifacts from Iraqi museums....
Gus |
